After spending hundreds of billions of dollars over the last decade on new roads, one fact is abundantly clear: As a nation, we are never going to build ourselves out of traffic congestion. The draw of the city is too powerful. ...

Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) is ready to bring nimble, urban-friendly motoring to South Korea's crowded city centers with a fleet of its brand new ultra-compact foldable electric vehicle for ...

Technologies from wind turbines to electric vehicles rely on critical materials called rare-earth elements. These elements, though often abundant, can be difficult and increasingly costly to come by. Now, scientists looking ...

Given declining revenues from gasoline and diesel fuel taxes and the need for new ways of funding road infrastructure, state and federal policymakers are considering or have enacted annual registration fees for plug-in vehicles. ...

Cars and environmentalism don't always going hand in hand. But that may be changing. On Tuesday, automobile and sustainability experts will discuss how people move around in a society that increasingly values green technology. ...

An international research team led by the Universidad Miguel Hernández (UMH) in Elche, Spain, has been working to acquire, pool and develop knowledge on various aspects of electric and hybrid vehicles, such as vehicle dynamics, ...

Electric vehicle

An electric vehicle (EV), also referred to as an electric drive vehicle, is a vehicle which uses one or more electric motors for propulsion. Depending on the type of vehicle, motion may be provided by wheels or propellers driven by rotary motors, or in the case of tracked vehicles, by linear motors. Electric vehicles can include electric cars, electric trains, electric airplanes, electric boats, electric motorcycles and scooters, and electric spacecraft.

Electric vehicles first came into existence in the mid-19th century, when electricity was among the preferred methods for automobile propulsion, providing a level of comfort and ease of operation that could not be achieved by the gasoline cars of the time. At one time the internal combustion engine (ICE) had completely replaced the electric drive as a propulsion method for automobiles, but electric power has remained commonplace in other vehicle types, such as trains and smaller vehicles of all types.

Electric vehicles are distinct from fossil fuel-powered vehicles in that they can receive their power from a number of sources, including fossil fuels themselves, nuclear power, and renewable sources such as tidal power, solar power, and wind power. This energy is then transmitted to the vehicle through use of overhead lines, wireless energy transfer, or a direct connection through an electrical cable. The electricity may then be stored onboard the vehicle using a battery, flywheel, supercapacitor, or fuel cell. Vehicles making use of engines working on the principle of combustion can usually only derive their energy from a single or a few sources, usually non-renewable fossil fuels.

At the beginning of the 21st century, increased concern over the environmental impact of the petroleum-based transportation infrastructure, along with the spectre of peak oil, led to renewed interest in an electric transportation infrastructure. As such, vehicles which can potentially be powered by renewable energy sources, such as hybrid electric vehicles or pure electric vehicles, are becoming more popular.